Many of you know may know me as an entrepreneur, but my background is actually SEO. Although I follow the rules these days, I am known to have dabbled in the dark arts of SEO. But don’t worry this post isn’t on SEO ethics or if you should be a black or white hat SEO.
From my experiences in both the black and white hat world of SEO, I have learned what you should avoid, if you don’t want your rankings to tank.
Common mistake #1: You can be rich, but not filthy rich… in anchor text
The best way to boost your rankings is to build rich anchor text links. For example, if my startup KISSmetrics wants to rank well for the term “web analytics” I need to get other websites to link to KISSmetrics.
When convincing these sites to link to me, I ideally want them to link with the phrase web analytics as the link text instead of my company name, KISSmetrics.
If more people link to you with the keyword you want to rank for as the anchor text of the link, your rankings will start sky rocketing for that keyword.
But what you may not know is that if you get too many links that are rich in anchor text your rankings will drastically drop after a while. So you have to rotate the anchor text up and ideally make it natural.
In essence having rich anchor text is good, but it can’t be too rich. I usually try to keep my anchor text rich for less than 10% of my links.
Common mistake #2: Don’t ignore internal pages
When you are optimizing your website for search engines, although it’s common for you to optimize the code on all pages of your website, for some reason you tend to forget about building links to your internal pages.
Your homepage is important, but having 100% of your links to your homepage is really unnatural.
I personally try to make sure that 80% of my links, if not more, are going to internal pages. And the best way to do this is to make sure your internal pages have really good content.
What you’ll notice when your internal pages start to get more links, the ranking of your homepage will also start going up. It’s because search engines don’t just try to evaluate where you should rank on a page-by-page basis, but they also look at your website as a whole. This is why sites like About.com and Wikipedia rank for millions of terms.
Common mistake #3: Slow and steady really does win the race
You have heard that phrase millions of times, but do you follow it? I know I always don’t.
Let’s go back to my previous example on the anchor text “web analytics”. Before I start building links, not only do I have to look at how many backward links I already have, but I also need to look at how many links my competitors have.
For example, if my competition on average has over 100,000 links when I only have 1000, my first instinct maybe to build links really fast and catch up. In an ideally world, that would work, but it isn’t the case with Google.
- Don’t try to grow your link count by double or triple each month. Try to stick with a smaller percentage like 5% or 10%.
- Don’t aim to build a ton of links, but instead building relevant links, as they will move your rankings a lot faster.
- Stay away from all page links. Although they can easily be bought, it’s unnatural that someone would link to your website from every page unless you have a blog (blogrolls).
I know doing the things I mentioned above won’t get you to the same link count as your competition, but you will start increasing your rankings drastically.
Don’t fall into the trap of building links quickly. Although your rankings will go up in the short run, it’s hard to maintain your rankings once you get to the top. You’ll start noticing way too many fluctuations compared to if you built relevant links slowly.
Common mistake #4: Content isn’t always king
Have you heard the saying that content is king? It usually is, but if you don’t have enough links coming into your website you won’t get that much traffic.
It’s not about going to oDesk and paying for a million pieces of content and trying to compete with Demand Media. It’s about having a good content to link ratio.
What I mean by this is that search engines analyze how many links you have coming into your website compared to how many links you have. So if you only have 100 links while having a million pieces of content, a lot of those pages won’t get indexed in Google unless you get more sites to link to yours.
Sadly I don’t know the exact ratio of content versus links that you should have, but I just recommend building up your content and links at the same time. If you don’t, your search engine traffic may stall.
Common mistake #5: Title tags and meta descriptions do matter
Out of all the years I have been doing SEO, it seems that you tend to make one mistake over and over. You take title tags and meta description tags for granted.
Now before I got into the simple title tag and meta description optimization techniques I use, I just want to ask you for one favor, don’t take them for granted. I used these simple tactics on sites like Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Mashable, and around 30 of the top 100 blogs on the Internet and their traffic went up drastically.
- Your title tags have to be unique on every page and around 60 characters.
- Do not include your website name in all of your title tags, as this makes them seem more duplicate. Just include your website name in the title tags for your homepage, about page, contact page, and other generic pages.
- Your met description tag needs to be unique, represent the content on the page (don’t just stuff it with keywords), and contain around 25 or so words.
Try making those changes to your title tags and meta descriptions. If you already have a good amount of links coming into your website and you have a decent amount of pages, you’ll notice that those changes can double your traffic like it did to TechCrunch. But if you don’t have that much traffic or links coming in, you won’t notice a big impact in your search engine traffic.
Conclusion
There are a lot of SEO tactics that you can use to increase your rankings, but before you pick them, be careful. Although you’ll notice your rankings going up in the short run, in the long run they can start going down. And before you figure it out, it’ll be too late.
Do you know of any other tactics that can crush your rankings?
PS: If you want to learn more on SEO, I highly recommend reading this beginner’s guide.
This amazing course will teach you, step by step, how to double if not triple your traffic over the next 30 days.
I think you can sabotage your own SEO efforts by over optimizing or getting distracted by every new trick or tactic that gets blogged about.
I could spend all day trying to implement every new trick that gets blogged about or mentioned online on my sites while ignoring the basics. It is fine to experiment and test new things but at some point you could be focusing your efforts on something of more value, like creating new and valuable content rather than trying to get your link profile to the exact ratio that you read about on “insert blog name here.”
Your 5 are great, they’re solid and proven. If I could add anything, I guess I would say running into duplicate content issues can crush your seo efforts. Whether its a url issue, stealing content from other sites or some other mistake that causes duplicate content.
Alex,
Totally agree about your comment especially the stealing content section and now Google is taking action as per their recent algorithm change.
Andrew
Duplicate content is way overhyped.
Sites don’t get “crushed” because of dup’ content. Maybe ignored, but “crushed” is an urban legend.
As for their “recent algorithm change,” its not related to complex “content farms” like Mahalo or LiveStrong.com, it has to do with lowest quality scraper sites: http://searchengineland.com/googles-content-farm-algorithm-not-live-yet-63207
Please inform yourself and help stop the mis-information in the industry.
As for Neil – I think the link building structure you gave here is really great. Sites with blog rolls going to their home page and more targeted links to individual pages effectively become authorities. There are ways to manufacture this kind of authority intentionally, but I think your blog is an A+ organic example. I’m sure tons of people blog roll your homepage because they think you’re cool, and at the same time, they cite specific articles in blog posts/news articles because they think you’re relevant. I’m pretty sure this is why you rank next to SEOmoz for terms like “learning SEO,” even though I doubt you’ve done any intentional link building for it.
In short, the high-volume, endorsement-type links to the homepage and more lazer targeted, specific links to deep pages is an ideal long-term link building structure.
-AP
P.S. re: On-page factors – AMEN. I get clients all the time that think we’re still in 2008 and you can just blast away with anchor texted link and “on-page is for noobs.” 100% foolish. Link building may be the long-haul, but on-page is the foundation. Not optional.
Individual duplicate page may get ignore, but just because they get ignore that doesn’t mean your whole site gets “crushed.”
A few days ago, I was sitting with a friend of mine who is an executive at a large SEO agency. We were looking at the first few pages of SERPs for his company and found a 100% duplicate of some crap press release that CBS.com picked up. I’m sure CBS.com has TONS of duplicate content like this pulled from press release directories, but do you think they’re particularly suffering or have been penalized?
A site that’s 100% duplicate content (e.g. scraper site) may have something to worry about, but having some percentage of duplicate content simply won’t hurt you – not currently anyway.
You’re right, the whole site may not get crushed, but those pages probably would. But still, the entire site gets slightly discredited which could impact it in the long run.
Check out info on panda update…duplicate content effects more then just the page the content is on!
Stealing content will drastically hurt your rankings.
It’s always best to setup a solid foundation that will allow you to focus on fine tuning over time.
Yeah, you are right, stealing content is bad but there are people that would whatever it takes to get on top but they aren’t able to realize that this isn’t the right and long term way. You need a lot of patience and a lot of hard work to be on top but this means doing your own work, not stealing from others. Anyway, what comes around goes around will happen eventually to those that use dirty tricks and will bite them in their back.
Yeah and you can do it fast, but you got to do it slow to learn the process first.
I think good on-page SEO is an important factor in the effectiveness of your off page SEO. If you master onpage and then build links back to those internal pages, then you should be able to dominate your market.
Good point Donny – any specific tips that would be more on page specific? I assume you mean content and keywords, titles, meta, etc?
Yes, those would be the basics of the on page seo that are also very critical.
There are so many small changes that can ultimately make huge differences over time. Both are equally important.
Great article. Especially the first item. I believe we fell victim to that working entirely on one anchor term we desperately wanted to win.
Yes and that does happen. It’s definitely a great idea to keep switching to different variations.
Hey Neil,
I concur on point #1. We have a client who has control over his customer’s websites, and has the liberty to put a link back to his site on about 3,000 sites. He made the mistake of making all of the anchor text the exact same, and sure enough, he went from like a #5 spot, to the 2nd or 3rd page.
Now I used to think that having too many links from the same c-block or IP (since he is hosting these sites) is not a good thing either, but recently the SEO community is saying that is not as big of a factor anymore…particularly in this case since they are one-way links.
Anyway, we recommended about 20-30 variation of anchor text and he gained his position back…and then some.
Good move! Yes having the same anchor text will hurt your rankings, no doubt.
Good read Neil. Sometimes you can know all the rules and still forget them when things get complicated. I’m glad for a simple summary like this that uses some good examples.
Yes, these small tid bits of mistakes can make a world of difference, both positively and negatively.
So if i want to ruin your kissmetrics rankings i just burst a ton of links to it and that’s done? Also, techcrunch takes the first paragraph and makes it the meta description, do you think that’s better than none?
It is ok but not great to just take the first paragraph, you want it to summarize it and be different to get better seo results. What techcrunch does, isn’t bad just not as effective.
It’s better to create a specific description which contains keywords and sells the person to come to the site.
I don’t think using your first paragraph is the most relevant item to use unless you’ve strategically put it together that way.
This is a great encouragement to keep on trucking when it comes to finding good links. Its so hard to not want to just get quick easy links. Thanks for the article!
This is a pretty good vanilla post. Doesn’t tell us very much new except for the first point. That’s certainly news to me, at the least.
I can’t understand why the anchor text being the same would cause the rankings to drop after a while…
Perhaps your link profile would look too unnatural? If you have thousands of perfect anchor text links the powers that be might consider taking a closer look into your site.
Ah that makes sense….thanks for that Alex.
Would that mean I have to change my keywords every so often? Because I obviously can’t impact the anchor link text…
You can cycle through anchor texts one at a time or just use varying modifications of the anchor text at the same time and see what works best for your sites and rankings.
For example, use “great school in los angeles”, “great schools in los angeles” “great school in la” “good schools in la” and throw in the branded term every once in a while.
Remember, the goal is that the link profile appears to be naturally occurring, not that you went out and built the links.
Exactly! Thanks for that Alex.
When you build links, don’t keep using “keyword” use variations of the keyword “best keyword” “top keyword” “keyword online” stuff like that.
Exactly and that almost instantly brings up a red flag.
Hello I am new to this SEO thing and I am so confused about the terms used in about half the article. However, I understand the main points you are trying ot make and I guess that’s what counts. thank you so much
@Toluwa – did you look at the beginner SEO link? It is really more than just beginner, but the basics are all covered and then some…
Let me know if that helps. Thanks for letting Toluwa know Clay
It takes time, that’s all. let me know if you need more guidance. I’ll point you in the right direction.
SEO is something that you learn in time and after you know all the terms and how to use it you will realize how much can help you boost your site on top.
At the end of the day, that’ll be the best source for high quality visitors.
Internal Linking can be a good strategy too. I managed to go to the top position in Google for a long tail keyword simply by heavy internal linking, without a single inbound link. It’s not a magic bullet, but it can help in rankings.
Exactly. Ranking for long tail keywords is also a lot easier, and usually converts a bit better.
Hi Neil – good points. But I do find it ironic that your website logo isn’t linked to your home page but the breadcrumb text “Home” is – which is counter productive. I’d also reco changing your nav text link “Answers” to “SEO Answers”. And while I’m at it, why is your Answers page title “Quicksprout Answers” and not include more descriptive SEO terms?
Because his site is first and foremost about business, and only secondly (if even) about SEO. The stuff you do for your own site may not be the best advice for everyone else.
Thanks for that Alex. SEO for this particular site really hasn’t been ont he top of my list, but maybe it should be
For this blog, I’m not really concerned with the on page seo right now. But I do appreciate all the fantastic tips.
Once again, great advice Neil. I think #5 is probably the most overlooked. Keyword stuffing might have worked in the old days when Yahoo, AOL, and Ask were king, but not in the Google world as we ourselves found out…
Very true… the better Search Engines get, the harder it is to do stuff like that.
These are some very good tips for search engine optimization. Especially like #3 and I really think that for every single business out there we all need some time and patience. That might work for link building too.
Everything you do online will take a long time. Patience allows you to be king in the online world
Hi Neil thank you for this SEO article, especially the point 2 and point 3. thank you again!
Glad you found it helpful, let me know how it works out.
#5 is so important.. lots of people spend great time to produce great content, however nobody even give them an once over because the meta is no good. =(
J
It just isn’t as effective as it use to be.
I have not heard about content vs links ratio learn some thing new from your Blog Thanks Neil.
I concur. Content to link ratio is a new concept for us as well. =) However it make sense and encourage build of deep links.
There are a lot of small details like that, that help you move up ranks in a competitive industry.
Thanks for seo tips neil but how much characters we should use in description can i include some keywords on them
If you mean your description tag, generally I have heard that you should limit it to 150 characters as anything beyond that will be cut off in Googles results.
yes but how many keywords i can use on them do you have any idea about it
@ Anitha, You should not repeat each keyword not more than 5 times. That is the perfect seo for header.
Keeping keyword more than 5 times, makes search engines think keyword stuffing. Thats makes less rankings.
Yes, it’ll actually hurt you more than help.
in your description, I’d use 1 or 2, just don’t stuff it.
I think it’s 160, but yes. Anything more isn’t relevant.
You can use the keyword once with 160 characters which is the max characters google shows.
Its true that once you are on top in short time, its difficult to maintain that position.
Very difficult… you’ll have maybe a day of success and then drop.
I’m glad to see someone actually telling the community that meta data is important. I am sick of hearing people say “oh Google ignores that stuff” because they really don’t.
Even if Google does ignore them as far as SEO goes, they are still vitally important for CTR. It is your one chance to convince the searcher that your link is worth clicking and that you will answer the query they have entered. If not for SEO, then for marketing benefits it is imperative to have a good meta description.
The meta description and title are important, just the keywords aren’t as much.
The keywords are what they usually ignore or what has no value.
Hi Neil, I’m happy to have found your site through a Smart Brief link. As a web designer, the one thing that constantly haunts me is a client that calls me up letting me know that they’ve hired an “SEO/Internet Marketing Expert” to help out, and they’ll be contacting me with some changes for the site. Anyone in my position knows what will be coming. I will be adding a link this post to my arsenal of client resources from a real SEO/Internet Marketing Expert. Thanks, and all the best!
Thanks Cary, glad you found this. Looking forward to yoru comments in the future.
Great article. Good focus on the basics and fundamental methods for optimizing a site the right way. Thanks for sharing excellent action steps for anyone trying to optimize their site for the search engines.
Thanks Shannon, glad you find it useful. Let me know it works out for you.
Excellent Article Neil. The best one, i do love is “Slow and Steady, Wins the Race”. Normally, i see many people just add some content, build Thousands of backlinks at once, it makes some little bit rankings in google, but later they will get a big slap from Google.
It’s happening faster and faster now a days. So instead of wasting money doing it, do it right the first time.
Fantastic article, Neil! Focus and patience is usually key to anything we do in life and this really exemplifies that. Steady process of SEO, link building, blog commenting and the like will definitely take effective, but it just takes time.
Thanks much for this!
Yes and the higher the quality, the more solid it would be on the search engine positions.
Great tips. Ya slow and steady does win the race; and fast and furious will kill you when it comes to SEO. There is no point in start building links with anchor texts in a hectic manner. By providing quality content and worrying a little bit about SEO will get the magic done.
Jane.
The anchor text can’t be too rich though, it needs to be just the right amount.
awesome stuff! I am just now starting to pay attention to the SEO of my site and it is the fundamentals like this that are often either over looked or never written about.
Love this basic, practical and actionable advice!
Good move! Better late than never right?
You make some rally good points. The 1st thing I look at when going through peoples site and assessing where they need improvement is the title page and the meta descriptions that is the most common mistake I find. And it is so simple to fix.
That’s probably the first thing I would recommend too. It’s funny how most people miss that.
Detailed and solid details, really like the concept to not just focus on a particular page to build link rather to build for other internal pages as well. Excellent tips.
Yes, the more natural it appears the better.
Thanks for all these tips Neil — all of them will help me… #2 stands out in my mind — I have completely missed this and have an immediate way to improve my blogging efforts.
Thanks a bunch!
Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest differences.
Great post and I agree with all 5!
One comment on Number 4 though that is pretty bad on rankings even if you have good content – post some content pages or blog posts or something to keep your site index fresh. Too long without any content and you’ll start dropping for all no matter how good your content and links are. Links and content that are 10 years old are still ranked highly if the site is consistently updated.
Yes because the search engines give points to the most updated info.
about #3, it is good “Slow and steady” but it is also good “Slow and Stop”.
what do you mean slow and stop?… i would keep on building slowly
I have noticed, when do linkbuilding for 20 steady days (first Set of links) then stop it for 10 days or more, again I start with the second set of links, I see faster results on the target keywords, than if It do linkguilding for 40 steady days.
Why?? I do not know…, i just know, it works for me.
I did it with some very competitive keywords “Modern Furniture, Sofas & Furniture” getting excellent results on Google.
Neil, What do you think about it?
Nice, if you’re strategy is working, then keep pushing!
#3 and #5 are 100% wrong here. Do some research before stating facts.
I’d like to hear your reasoning on why you think they’re wrong…
Good reminders and the slow and steady, spot on.
I do need to somewhat disagree about the “content is king” vs. inbound links. Logically, you will get all those links because your content is king. People won’t want to link to you if your content sucks : )
Exactly. Natural links are gold and if you don’t have legit content to back it up, then you’re SOL.
Neil, You rock. Thanks for providing such great, high quality info. I especially like when you include specific strategies you employed with your clients (ie. techcrunch)
Glad you find it useful Ki, let me know how you apply it on your sites.
Great article though I’m still puzzled just how much attention pays to an ‘unnatural’ backlink pattern. If we assume that Google will punish sites with lots of identical anchor text backlinks as ‘over-optimised’ then it would be easy to push competitors sites down simply by arranging lots of same anchor text links to their sites! Surely Google is not going to allow webmasters to push each others sites down in rankings like that?!
I don’t think they would. But to be honest a lot of people talked about this and very rarely do I see companies screwing over their competition as it can be very costly to build links for your competition.
You know, I would like to say that although you give great and practical tips in many of your blogs, they often have very negative aspects. No, I’m not complaining that everything isn’t happy rainbows and butterflies – that wouldn’t be reality. But I think another important aspect of being successful has to do with being positive and supportive. Many of your posts talk about what you shouldn’t do, what people don’t do, and common mistakes. This kind of thing is ok sometimes…but when someone reads your blog and feels like they’re being told NOT to go any further, you’re ironically telling them also not to read your blog anymore.
Just a piece of advice from the other side that I thought perhaps you could take.
I appreciate the advice. I will try and be more positive.
neil – know anything about site load time and rankings? if anyone has a resource to point me to, that would be great. thanks for the good reminders!
I don’t have anything to point you to, but yes, site load time does make a difference in rankings.
These are awesome SEO tips Neil. Certainly something to refer back to from time to time. Consistency is certainly key and I will be sharing these tips. Gotta check out your KISSmetrics …
Awesome, you definitely should. Let me know how it works out for you.
I think the internal and deep link building is a great tip. Most people focus on their main page when sometimes deep links produces tremendous traffic when optimized.
Yes, it helps a lot in traffic basis. Because, sometimes internal pages get high page rank than main page. That page will be displayed in google with high rankings. So, not only main page, we have to do, but we have to optimize internal pages as well.
Yes sine the deep links are the ones that usually rank for long tail keywords.
Yes and not mention that deep links are very powerful in the eyes of search engines.
Simple. Be yourself, do your stuff. Don’t consider Google, nor Yahoo. Think for your customers, your business, your quality. If you are successful there, your customers visits, Google kisses your site. That gives you the long term success.
Yes, when you put your customers as your focus, you’ll have much higher engagement.
These are all solid and proven tips. Internal link building can be tough to do naturally.
Also, I didn’t know that too many of the same anchor links could hurt, good to know.
We recently wrote an article entitled 12 Easy SEO Tips for a Better Search Engine Ranking.
Good article. Short, sweet, and useful.
Well it’s actually really easy when you have a blog with some high quality content. That’s when you can really get your internal pages to soar.
Hey Neil, Thanks a lot for these tips. I will make sure I follow these things.. though I do not avoid these.. u know it is always important to make your clients happy at the end of the day
Thanks once again..
Yes, that’s why they’re paying you, right lol?
I have tried these tips on our site about a year ago for test keywords we were shooting for. We had very good success. Very good point is the “Not building to fast”. I had many people beat us for top keywords, Just to lose that spot in a few weeks never to be seen again.
Why do you think it is? — I’ve heard of this “sandbox effect” happens — however haven’t witness this myself.
Neil anything on the “google sandbox”?
J
Usually happens when links are built really fast, especially for newer sites.
@Neil how we can figure out is our site in sand box will receive any mails from google
no you won’t, you just won’t see it in the rankings
Yeah, you just need to figure out how to start adding links slowly. Especially if they’re keyword rich.
@Neil More over keyword analysis are more important right ?
Yes because it’ll save you more time in the long run.
Hi,
i have one question but it is related to this topic, but it is related to seo, and i asked this one in many forums, but i couldnt exact solution, question is,
i m using some around 6-8 keywords for the homepage, and all of them are in good position, where in that two of them are one word keyword, so i m trying to bring up, and i used all kinds of link building techniques, but no result, so can you solve my problem.
What kind of link building and what are the anchor texts for your links.
@anitha if you list out your strategy here any one can help you
Yes, thanks Anitha.
I like the idea of taking advice from an SEO artist who’s played on both sides of the game.
It kinda reminds me of the “delivery man thief” turned anti-theft consultant to big chain retail stores that the famous marketing consultant, Dan Kennedy, used to tell the story about.
These fancy pants store owners should’ve known their business better but almost all of them falsely operated under the premise that customers were responsible for all of the theft going on in their stores. This consultant would then come in and show them 82 ways employees and vendors were stealing from right under their nose.
Seems like a guy who’s played both sides of this game could shine some light on issues only the dark side could reveal. I’ll be sure to be coming back here!
i m working these keywords rugs, rug, and large rugs,
in google.co.uk , i used the following techniques like directory submissions, social bookmarking, blog comments, article submissions and forum posting, but i cant see good result, where mainly the above keywords, which i have mentioned are still in second and third page, so could you help me out.
Neil could you provide some advice on this?
Neil, what are your thoughts on building page rank with “forum postings, article submissions, blog commenting, buying into directories for back links” strategy?
Does the method in which the link to your site originates determine the strength or credit for the backlink? For instance, I’m sure your link has more “juice” so to speak, if you are mentioned directly in a blog article, as opposed to commenting on the blog article?
This leaves many people and their SEO strategies at a wits end I’m sure.
They are good, but not as strong.
You gotta keep going for keywords like those… highly competitive. I would try to be more specific. Cheap red rugs, cheap large rugs, large rugs that are red etc.
yup, the keywords which you mentioned are good, but i also had some low competitive keywords like large rugs, rugs online, rugs for sale, they also like a cat on the wall., one day in first page and other day, it moved back, so i cant able understand. why always changing also the links i got from other sites, where also started cache by search engines, so i need some help.
It means you need more variations to your keywords…they are too rich.
i cant get your point mate, what kind of variation that you are seeing,
I don’t agree with you. Content updating regularly is not a must point for seo persons.
It helps.
There is a “fresh content” boost from my experience. But overall it’s making quality on page content then building links with anchor variety (I go for 4-5 usually).
One tip I would add is internal linking within your site. Google ranks pages not sites so I have found it does help to regularly link to your own content within your site.
Yes exactly. You should be doing inner links as well. The deeper, the better.
“Your title tags have to be unique on every page and around 60 characters.”
This is such a great tip. It is an absolute challenge coming up with unique meta titles on an E-Commerce website, where you have the same product but just varying colors, sizes, etc. for each item. But it certainly helps ranking for a variety of keywords.
Great tip Neil.. this is often overlooked because it is so specific and hard to overcome. Often people will have trouble executing their SEO strategy and coming up with unique meta titles is no doubt a big obstacle.
It’s a daunting task to go through each and every page to do this, but it’s necessary.
I recently created a website and I violated #1 and #3. I built way too many anchor text links, too fast.
It was actually an experiment to see how aggressive I could be with my link building, well I found out pretty fast – not very aggressive. The site has been in the sandbox for about 4 months now.
Good advice my friend.
Finally, you have got a result for voilation. From Next time, dont make that mistake.
Well, we learn from all of our mistakes.
I think the mistake is that people want to see results almost instantly – and they were unaware of the Google sandbox effect. So in essence, people who start new websites need to change their mentality and approach growth at a slow, healthy rate.
Very true, trying to rush it only makes it harder than it is.
It’s a good lesson to learn
ouch… yeah that happens and you just gotta be careful in the future. Change up the anchor text.
Neil, what your experience is one getting sandboxed and making it out?
Sanboxed is just a temporary thing that happens to sites that are newer. Just be slow and steady with your link building.
Good stuff. It never ceases to amaze me that the home page title tag for most sites is still the company name only.
It is amazing how a relatively small number of backlinks from authority domains can boost your rank. I am talking in the 200 hundred range – not thousands. I developed/seo’d one site that went from 100 hits a week to 3,000+. We added relevant content, seo’d the site properly and asked gave some customers material that made it worth linking to us. These customers are medical societies who have good ranks for their content. Whalla! – traffic.
On the flip side – I have another site that has similar amounts of content, with little backlinks and we are not getting enough traffic. Though we were not as thoughtful with on-site SEO and since we don’t have high ranking customers to ask for links traffic building is a much slower process. Link building is very slow…
True about the slow link building, but if you just do 10 a day you will have 3,000+ in less than a year… 30 a day and you’ll have that same amount in one 4 months… not bad really because at some point other people will start linking and make your job easier…
Yes over time, you’ll naturally get more and more links. 10 a day is a lot actually, too much for most sites.
Great examples! It’s a process that definitely takes time. The more patient you are, the easier it’ll be.
Neil’s job is to dispel these poor practices and reinforce good SEO practices. It’s not that it is “nothing new”. Many people practice the wrong SEO and end up with all sorts of issues, like the infamous Google sandbox.
Good points Neil. I was doing these things for better SEO and you have clearly explained that how it can be mistakes while doing SEO of website. I think better Onpage is the most important part for effective results in Search Engine.
They are both extremely useful and necessary techniques that go hand in hand. The smallest changes can make the biggest difference.
Great sharing Neil! Have been writing blogs and not knowing SEO is so important to get traffic in. Learn a lot from your article and will start to pay a lot more attention on on page and off page SEO!
It’s the determining factor of your site succeeding… or not. So it’s definitely a great idea to learn as much as you can.
Yes, that can hurt your rankings very quickly.
Whom did you answer to?
“Yes, that can hurt your rankings very quickly.”
Yes, it’s true. You have to work hard to get up in the rankings, but it is very hard and keep yourself up there.
It’s hard to get up there, it’s easier to maintain yourself once you’re there. But then you should always stay on your toes as someone else is probably right behind you.
I appreciate this post. I wish I found this sooner. I’ve had a niche site going up and down in the Google rankings. It went from #11 by not doing much to the bottom. Then I brought it back up by linking back to it but I think I overdid it with the anchor text and not linking to internal pages. I bascially did what I shouldn’t do.
Now it’s ranked 705. Any quick advice on how to get it back up? Slow and steady and to do the opposite of what you suggest?
Yes, that’s pretty much all you can do at this point. If the sites completely banned, I’d recommend doing it over again.
With every new post I write, I am aiming to include at least 2-3 links to my previous content. I do this not just to help the SEO of the site, but also to help my readers discover some of my older content that they may have missed.
Since I installed WordPress for my blog instead of a different service, I have been very active in making sure my meta-tags/titles have been filled out. I was clipping portions of the content to use as a meta-description, but I will try to write more original content instead of duplicate stuff found in the post.
Thanks for the tips!
Great job… definitely a good idea to go through everything again and make the necessary changes to become fully optimized.
Hard work sometimes means being patient with SEO effort rather than going too fast. — And quality over quantity.
Yes, very true. It’s better to go at a steady pace of a month with quality links, then do a bunch of crappy links over the course of a few days.
SEO is a great tool to get yourself on top but is like everything we do in life. It takes some time, it requires hard work and a lot of patience. If you get too hungry and try the fastest ways you will just end up loosing in the long term. If you want it to last than take it slow.
Slow and steady wins the race, just ask the tortoise
So funny–I think I’ve made ever single mistake you listed on previous sites and blogs! …Glad I found your blog, b/c I’m currently in the process of becoming the website SEO guru for my firm. Thanks for the great advice!
Then this should be a great way to start
Neil:
Great article as usual.
What kills me about all of this SEO insanity is that 99% of the people who talk SEO are only guessing. Only Google knows the algoritm for sure.
just like eveyone thoguht you needed to buy your domain name for 5 years or Google wouldn’t let you out of the sandbox.
Matt Cutts killed that theory finally.
What else are all the socalled experts shooting “blind” and charging a ton of money for?
Patrick
It’s all speculation… everything that you see is just tried and hopefully true. You’re very right on that.
Some really useful insights on SEO. Though I am not sure if your suggestions are still valid in the changed world of SEO, as in anchor text and title tags do matter but it has become insanely difficult to rank even if you have lots of sites linking to you.
Algorithms are constantly changing so it is tough to know what’s actually working at any given time. These principles have worked in the past and still seem to work right now.
I am wanting to learn about Business Marketing. Should I join associations? What should I do in order to learn this from the ground up.Thanks a lot.
That’s definitely a great place to start.
I am looking to study SEO and digital marketing and I want to take more than a 1-3 day course which there seem to be a lot of. Can anyone recommend a course that looks at SEO in depth?Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thank you.
Check out websites like seomoz.com
Amazing!! The perfect list about the the mistakes to avoid in SEO.
The bloodline of any online business is traffic. With over a billion internet users how do you attract them to your website? Answer is SEO!
So we need to be very careful when doing SEO.
There are too many mistakes that people can make that’ll kill all of their hard work. Best to know what to avoid right
?
Fantastic. I’ve done some SEO and one of the hardest things is stumbling around in the dark trying to figure things out for myself. It’s so much easier to get ahead when seasoned professionals like yourself are offering tips.
Thanks!
Pete
I’m glad you see it like that Pete, thanks!
Having done a good SEO to your website is really important.
These five mistakes are really important to be considered while doing that
It’s better to know what doesn’t work before you put things into play, right?
Great article. I am starting to build links to my site and it is so so hard when my content in my opinion is great. Good sites are pretty stingy with links especially active links that do not have no follows. Please write something about how to get links as I am stuck. Any advice would be great.
You should use a tool like kissinsights.com to see what your audience thinks of your content. http://www.quicksprout.com/2010/03/17/7-ways-to-legitimately-build-backlinks/ is a good article on backlinks
Appreciate your article. It had some really good points and reminders that I need to make sure I’m following. For instance not getting to crazy with the duplicate anchor text links and paying more attention to my meta tags. Your explanation on inner pages affecting your overall homepage page rank was most excellent!
@Mathew Day: Meta tags given any worth as they won’t give much i think let me know if you have any success with it before
Meta keywords don’t give much help but the description and title are very important.
It’s all the little things that collectively add up that make a big difference.
Neil,
This was one very good article! The information overload on what it takes to get ranked and optimized properly, varies as much as the number of animals in God’s earthly creation!
The best point you made is the fact that, anytime you start to “load” your site in anyway, Google will probably see it as bogus.
My article about Googles latest algorithm (http://searchwarp.com/swa698147-Google-Search-Keeps-Getting-Better.htm) proves that we’ll never be ahead of the game unless we play by their rules.
Great article, thanks!! They’re getting smarter and smarter and it’s making the search better and better.
I think the golden rule is to make your SEO efforts look as natural as possible. Search engines can very easily detect when you’re trying to game them, so there’s very little benefit in trying to do so. If you use keywords in your description and title, plus update your site on a regular basis then you will rarely have to worry about building links yourself as your site will often rank anyway.
Yep, that’s exactly true. Keep it plain and simple and you’ll naturally become successful.
This is such a great tip. It is an absolute challenge coming up with unique meta titles on an E-Commerce website, where you have the same product but just varying colors, sizes, etc. for each item. But it certainly helps ranking for a variety of keywords.
Yes, it’s definitely a lot of work, but at the end of the day, it could be worth your while.
I am prejudiced in using internet marketing for small business. I own a brick and mortar store but I want habitation online too. Does anyone have any ideas? Gratitude in advance.
hi Neil,
is a 200 or 300 word article enough for a page, and should it be only optimized for 1 keyword per page..??
Try to shoot for quality content, but yes, you’ll definitely need 200-300+ words per page.
I am starting to build links to my site and it is so so hard when my content in my opinion is great. Good sites are pretty stingy with links especially active links that do not have no follows. Please write something about how to get links as I am stuck. Any advice would be great.
http://www.quicksprout.com/2010/03/17/7-ways-to-legitimately-build-backlinks/
read that
I believe we fell victim to that working entirely on one anchor term we desperately wanted to win
Yeah, I agree with you. People focus too much on one term that then end up hurting themselves more than they help.
Thanks for the tips. I actually read this a long time ago, but didn’t have time to comment. Linking internal pages is one of the things I don’t do from your list. This is the first thing I’ll make sure I do for each new post. Thanks again.
Neil,
I just discovered your blog recently and sadly realize how many gems of information I’ve been missing! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge and experience. Very helpful indeed.
For the last few years, the hype has been to do social media left and right (Twitter, Facebook, etc), in order to get high-ranking, high-authority backlinks to your site. Which is important. But then people wonder why they are not ranking for those keywords they want. They have forgotten, or erroneously downplay, the importance of on-site optimization, as you have discussed in this post.
Some of the smallest factors make a significant impact on a businesses well-being. Well glad to have you on board with Quicksprout, looking forward to your future comments.
Hi Neil,
I personally reading your blogs from last 4 years. You write really useful & informative content. Nowadays SEO become more tough because people being more alert about online marketing of their companies. So it is not easy to increase serp as before. Also search engine changed their strategies. Content is king but inbound links are also most required thing and social media optimization also most important part if any user want to drive traffic.
Thanks
Jarret
At the end of the day, if you want to stay ahead of the competition, you really need to stay on top of what’s going on with the search engines.
If you pick highly competitive keywords dominated by established sites all your SEO efforts will be a waste of time. You must spend time on keyword research before you do anything else and find keywords that are not too competitive but have a reasonable search volume. Thanks….
Yeah if the words are much too competitive, you’re probably running your wheels. You’re better off focusing on more long tail in that case.
the most common mistake is keywords choosing and regular content updation, most of them are not doing it properly, so do you have any suggestions for that and wat do you thinking about social media in product promotion.
I think social media works well, but maybe not for product promotion. Too spammy. Give away more free useful information.
Majorly product promotion are not seen much in all the social media sites as you can create some page about your service in facebook and make them promote
yeah, but it’s not the best thing to do stuff like that as if you don’t provide anything of value, you’re screwed.
If you pick highly competitive keywords dominated by established sites all your SEO efforts will be a waste of time. You must spend time on keyword research before you do anything else and find keywords that are not too competitive but have a reasonable search volume. Thanks..
It’s definitely a good idea seeing how it takes time, a lot of time working on the site.
Hey Neil, good post my man. It’s funny how all of these “latest and greatest” sec “tactics” are always seeming to come out of the woodworks… but in the end staying with the basics and foundations of creating remarkable and relevant content, knowing what words people are using to find what you’ve got, and having a sound and simple website structure is always what it boils down to.
One of our first sites we set up a couple years ago gets about 200,000 page views a month now… but it was a slow and steady haul of just always doing the small things right. That traffic comes in day in and day out without any advertising. Ha, Internet Brands contacted us last week to offer to buy it because its traffic is based on sound (and simple) SEO practices that Google loves.
Great post man. Reaffirms we’re doing the right things
It isn’t a race and it seems like you have the right business model. Congrats on the offer of being bought, did they give you a good offer or a not so good one?
That’s awesome, you guys are doing exactly what should be done and you’re seeing the results.
Your post proves that taking it slow is the way to go for the long term. There is no point in having success for a short time if everything will fall apart after that. If you are patient and let things flow on their own the success will last and eventually somebody will make an offer to buy your website which is GREAT.
Strange but I feel the same thing goes for investing in the market, slow but sure wins the race.
The Content must be useful to the readers through the keyword they search and not for namesake.
Exactly.. the more relevant it is, the higher it’ll convert.
Content is the king. If you do not have valuable content then you won’t have valuable readers. There is no point in putting content just to be there if it presents no interest to anybody. It is better to have less but valuable content rather than a lot and without any value.
Yes, that’s well said. What you put on your site tells your audience what you’re all about.
hi Niel,
I have observed that top 5 sites never existed earlier, I don’t see any SEO done in these pages, they are more of directories which just give a bit of information with few links to internal pages. These pages don’t have PR , and have no external links, now tell me what is that , we need to do,to get back at what we were?????
What sites are you talking about?
On the Point 4, at meta tags, i think you are not correct, because this are available on the google guidlines optimization ebook. I think its not the ranking factor, but an small important thing.
Btw, a nice post
Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impact.
Yeah number 1 was something I learned the hard way, anchor text diversity is key, make it look as natural as possible.
Exactly. Messing up on that a lone will ruin all your hard work.
i am a newbie in SEO and these tips are very effective for me. I have few sites and will apply these trick on my site. I also consider content and keyword optimization is big thing in SEO Ranking. Thanks Neil
Good job Kuldeep, let me know how it works out for you.
i am a newbie in SEO and these tips are very effective for me. I have my own new website. but i consider content and keyword optimization is big thing in SEO Ranking. Thanks Neil i am fan of your blog.
Thanks bud! Let me know if there’s any advice you need.
I use the simple trick of pretending I’m writing for really intelligent people. That way it reads fluidly for us, and the content is expressive and varied which optimizes for search engines. The bonus is that my visitors feel even smarter after reading it, which is kind of the point of providing a website – people want your information, all of it.
Yep, that’s usually why you get the best quality of traffic from organic search.
What can be done if you’ve possibly already over anchored a bunch of links? Is there any way to correct the problem? Thanks
See if you can change the anchor text still. If not just slow down on those links and focus on other anchor texts.
Im running a test blog right now and trying different things to optimize it for SEO. Long-tail keywords really seem to be the key to increase traffic. Also sites like these are an invaluable tool for those just starting out. Thanks Neil!
They will definitely provide high quality and converting traffic.
Very well said about content and backlinks; and I would like to add few things please.
Most SEOs only focus on writing and writing alot, but they don’t pay certain importance to get quality backlinks. They do get backlinks but most of them (in most cases), are not relevant. Backlinks are a backbone of any SEO strategy and it helps in achieving results systematically.
Thanks for sharing.
Yeah and back links really is the way to rank higher in search engines.
Search engine optimization needs a good search engine optimizer plan. Simply one of these methods can make an enormous distinction in your websites place and firm your website brings you.
we have to plan first what we have to optimize.
its the best option to optimize first with long tail keywords
Yeah it definitely is since it’s much easier to rank for that stuff.
after all those hard work when google sandboxed your site it really hurts a lot
Yeah, that’s definitely a crappy feeling when all that hard work gets put on pause.
if we build irrelevant links it will affects as a lot so we should avoid link spamming
Yes, that’s very true! Always avoid irrelevant links as it’ll hurt you, especially in the long run.
How about submitting in high pr directories will its gives worth,because its take time for approval
In the long run it will definitely help. If you are looking for quick results you should look elsewhere.
Has anyone experimented with using video hosting sites for incoming links? like youtube or dailymotion?
Most of those links are no follow, but that could be a great idea. A video hosting site that supports links. Let me know if you find anything!
Neil i have started an website would like to have some help from you can you suggest how my sites looks
Sure, what’s the URL?
Neil this is an excellent post. As someone with a relatively new website, it can be so confusing with the various recommendations regarding best practice.
I particularly like your suggestions regarding internal links etc, and not to build links too quickly.
Thankyou for sharing these tips with us
Thanks
Chris
Glad you found the article useful. Good luck!
Good article, I am learning more about SEO all the time. Constantly chasing that ranking and your tips about different title pages is something I will try.
Thanks, I am glad you found it useful. Good luck with your SEO education
wow you have mentioned it all there. I am blessed to come up with this content. It pays digging all your articles. Common mistake #1 hit me but I corrected it already.
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, much appreciated
Wow, Look at all these comments you have.
One of my fears is making changes to a site that currently ranks good in google. I’m currently in the process of updating and giving one of my sites a complete overhaul. I’m also wanting to change the page titles to target or match each page so I just hope google doesn’t slap the site off the current first page ranking for a highly competitive keyword.
The reason for the changes are because it’s been almost 2 years since the site was built and is in need of updating.
Does anyone here have any experience with this or have suggestions?
I completely understand your fears. I suggest you find someone who can offer you an SEO audit, they will look at all the problems involving updates, keyword competition, and so forth. Good luck!
Oh yeah, it’s a wordpress site that’s linked to in my name. Should be updated completely in the next 20 days. One other thing is that it gets on average around 13,000 visitors per month so I can’t figure out why the Alexa rank is so low like 6,000,000. The .com of this same name doesn’t rank as good on any of the big three search engines for the domains main keyword but ranks much better.
Hi Neil,
I had a question about #5. I have a new site that I am optimizing and I am definetely not taking the title and meta tags for granted
Having said that, I am concerned that editing/changing/optimizing them too often will actually hurt my rankings.
So I guess my questions are… How often is TOO often to be changing/editing/optimizing the tags for certain kws? Or since this is such a new site and not ranked high, I shouldn’t worry about this…yet?
Thanks!
Great questions. Looks like you are on the right path in terms of SEO. First off, its great that you understand the lingo and the importance of trying new things. Many SEOs think keyword research is a one time deal…wrong.
I suggest you keep testing to see what is working for you. Simple A/B testing usually does the trick. However, make sure you are giving your keywords enough time to mature between tests. Maybe look for and tests new keywords every three months?
Thank you for the prompt reply Neil!
So if I am understanding correctly you’re saying I can change my title and meta tags (even my HOME page tags) to include the kws I am going after every 3 months without risk of Google penalties?
It sure would suck to do 3 months of work and move up in rankings and then get penalized from changing the tags ! haha
I will definitely be doing the A/B tests as you suggested on my internal pages, but its the Home page tags that I’m really wondering about.
oh and this is the article that got me thinking about this by the way – http://www.google-success.com/changing-title-tag-can-hurt-google-rankings.htm
Its old, but I think it still applies.
I hate to say this but…it all depends. You need to find out what works within your niche. Testing your home page is definitely a risk you will have to take eventually if you want to see search rankings increase. Good luck!
This article really solve abundant of puzzles in my head about the link buildings
Awesome, good luck!
Hi Neil
Excellent post. Its always good to know all this SEO stuff to get good rankings on the search engines. It obviously takes time. I like the idea of having quality content on your site and also making sure you are getting back links as well.
I have definately used meta tags on all my blogs through blogger.com. Now I’ve got to create back links.
Well thanks again Neil in your excellent delivery of important business information. Its been a pleasure reading your posts. For that purpose I have writen a post about your website on my site http://ewebsitebuilding.com.
The title of the post is:’How To Create An Ecommerce website’.
As time permits, I’ll keep coming back to your website and possibly write some more posts on my website about what ‘Quicksprout is all about.
Thanks again Neil. Have a great day.
Thanks for the blog post. I will check it out and I am sure I will enjoy it.
Careless implementation and overly aggressive blackhat SEO tactics have led to the downfall of many websites. It is very important to be careful and tread that fine line that ensures no penalties. tricky tricky! :p
Definitely, you have to watch what you do out there in the SEM world.
Yeah i am guilty of backlinking just my homepage. I will do better from now on.
Yeah, you should definitely switch it up!
Hi Neil,
Having links as nofollow with keyword will give serp promotion?
Not necessarily…
thank you neil , i should start building some backlinks for my site
Definitely, you should really utilize some of the new strategies out there.
Neil,
In terms or internal links… why exactly are these important? I mean I get that when Google looks if other websites are linking to your site it’s kinda like a vote on how popular you are but if you have internal links to your pages isn’t that like just voting for yourself? Wouldn’t Google ignore this kinda minipulation?
Thanks in advance
Google doesn’t ignore it or consider it manipulation it just places less emphasis on internal links when it comes to “voting” The algorithm is complex, I am sure they account for internal links differently.
Neil thanks for the great post, want to try in my blogs i made many mistakes had to sort out now thanks once again
Keep trying things, practice makes perfect!
neil, thanks for these great advises you’ve been posting. You see I’ve just started joining this kind of business and your post is a big help for me and the company I’m working with. I’m so happy that I have stumbled upon your blog. Thank you very much.
Glad I could be of some assistance. Good luck with everything
I agree. Don’t make Links too fast
Yep, glad you agree.
Even i have also compiled some SEO tricks in a format of article, Still love your idea about description of article and anchor text. Most of the time we do ignore the importance of anchor text while placing links.
Thanks Rakesh,
I appreciate you sharing what you enjoyed about this post.
I’m writing to let you know what a fabulous experience my wife’s daughter went through viewing your site.
Glad she enjoyed it, thanks Levonia. I appreciate the feedback
I enjoy you because of every one of your work on this web site.
Thanks Lizeth, glad you find the time to read my posts
I must express some thanks to the writer for rescuing me from this incident.
Glad you were able to avert danger, thanks for reading Kip
Title tags and meta descriptions do matter, this is something i have actually seen article written about how they do not matter. It really annoys me when I see things like this because they are important and it is one of the most easy things to do. It is really confusing as to why people don’t think they matter.
They definitely do, they allow crawlers to access and curate content from your site. They are of the utmost importance when someone runs a site audit or creating a new website. Thanks for reading
Thank’s I just learn to built new blog
No problem.
Glad I could help.
Number 5 really does make a difference, it seemed as if only one blog post was reaching Google search results, but then I used a unique title for each post and BOOM more results for my site! Once again, great tips!
Thanks Kuhlmad,
Sometimes you have to try a variations of things in order to get the results you want. Good to know these tips were able to help.
“Do not include your website name in all of your title tags, as this makes them seem more duplicate. Just include your website name in the title tags for your homepage, about page, contact page, and other generic pages.”
I’ve made this mistake. I’m still fixing it…
As long as you know what you need to fix and are working to get it done you should be good. Let me know if you have any questions as you go.
Thank’s neil.I have a questions how to optimized my blog for yahoo search ? Maybe you can help me to get great rank for yahoo
Optimizing for Yahoo is just like optimizing for Bing, as the results are provided by them.
Hi Neil, another great article. One question, when posting simple blog comments for link building (rather like this comment), by attempting to add your own niche into the anchor text (e.g.
apologies I din’t mean to post half a question
… continued (e.g. Jason @ Tenant Loans) do moderators look at it as ‘spammy’?
Some do, while others don’t. I judge based on the comment quality versus the author name.
I knew this thing before also that if more people link to me with the keyword I want to rank for as the anchor text of the link, my rankings will start sky rocketing but I did not know that too many links will drop down my ranking. Thanks dear for providing such an important info!
Cool, glad this post could provide you with additional information.
This is pretty valuable information, however it seems like a lot to take in (kind of overwhelming). How are you suppose to keep track of all these ratios? I can’t even figure out how many backlinks I have anymore since yahoo closed that backlink service. Google webmaster tools doesn’t seem to show all the backlinks I have and they only give a link to the homepages. They don’t give very much info on the links themselves. I will start linking all my pages more to focus on them. That helps me out a lot. I have very few links in that department.
Thank you,
Tom
Try out Open Site Explorer.
Neil, If I’m targeting 4 keywords equally for my site, how many total anchor text variations would you recommend? Thanks for your time.
I would recommend at least 8.
Hi Neil – thanks for posting. Do you have a view re. letting some of your website being copied? For example, you’re a software company with resellers scattered around the world. You definitely want these resellers to promote your software – and be ‘on message’ – so you refer them to your website as a reference point. But what if they copy whole pages verbatim? I appreciate that this will be detrimental to your SEO but is there a change that this downside is outweighed by the resellers giving you an online presence in a country where you rarely get found anyway? Would love to hear your thoughts as I’m no expert. Thanks, Mark
The anchor text diversity issue is now more relevant than ever with panda 3.3.
I am going to have to get on the ball with meta descriptions… pain to do for my site, but i’m realizing that they are still important.
Thanks for the post.
Yep, it is definitely worth the effort.
Another great article, google updated their algo and now you have to have a good social profile and good communication with customers in order to rank higher in search engines…
That is correct, glad you know what Google is looking for now.
I think much of SEO comes down to common sense. There many theories out there and I tend to subscribe to the ones that make sense and it seems to work for me.
Thanks Neil, this is the sort of information I can use to increase my ranking and traffic.
Can you have one keyword in most or all of your page titles? My example: Let’s say I have a computer training website with many courses listed. Each course has a unique title, but with the “training” keyword in each. Is this good or is it looked at as too redundant? The same question can be asked for the URL as well.
Thanks.
Link exchange is nothing else except it is just placing the other
person’s web site link on your page at appropriate place and other person will also do same for you.
I have read all your points, and it was worth reading it.. But lemme know one thing that isn’t content is the king
?
hey neil,
Common mistake #3: Slow and steady really does win the race, totally agree with it. thank you for informing us with these mistakes.
Thanks again.
Matt
Hi there Dear, are you really visiting this web site on a
regular basis, if so afterward you will without doubt get pleasant know-how.
Thanks for this post. I didn’t realize about putting my site name in the titles that it would water it down. Changed it!
Hey Neil love your blog, been following it for a while now.
Love your tips and I’m especially appreciative of the third one since I’ve built links too fast myself. You rank high early but you plummet down really fast as well lol.
Local SEO, I believe can get away with more than sites trying to rank nationally. Seems Google welcomes ANY site that at least has some sort of structure and inbound from relevant site. They struggle to find sites to rank locally other than the other directories. So, if all that is ranking in a locality, for targeted keywords, are other directories, a site webmaster wouldn’t have to work too hard to get the site noticed.
I noticed that even web directories that has no Page Rank (even no zero) like if there were not indexed, still can appear at a good position in Google and give you a good inbound link. I don’t understand how it’s possible. Could you tell me why tons of useless, unindexed pages linked to your homepage might still have a good impact on your overall ranking?
This is a great encouragement to keep on plugging along when it comes to finding good links. Its so hard to not want to just get quick easy links. Thanks for the article! Youre an SEO lifesaver!!
How can we know if a link has been indexed by the search engines. Also, do link energizers work?
It is fine to experiment and test new things but at some point you could be focusing your efforts on something of more value, like creating new and valuable content rather than trying to get your link profile to the exact ratio that you read about on “insert blog name here.â€
Actually I went through a strange experience. With no links I was ranking Higher the I saw that as people started to link my website it drop down drastically in rankings. Search results behave strangely for me.
Neil, Great article. By the way I coudnt afford paying to build a website or an SEO company so i spend alot of time reading and researching. I build my own website and now working on my SEO. I think i only have 6 backlinks and you coould find my home page only on the third page of google. not bad for a beginner but still cant get clients. i added .html to all my pages but non of them are showing up. Can I please get any articles or advices that can help me. Thank you Neil..
It’s truly a great and useful piece of info. I am glad that you shared this helpful information with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thank you for sharing.
Pretty decent post and covered almost all important topics for SEO. But I have to tell you that “Content is still the King”..I know without backlinks not much of a ranking but this is kind of egg and chicken question. With great content, links will automatically start building on its won and without links not much of a traffic.
I was looking to find why some pages have high PR than the homepage itself and landed. Obviously its not handled here..anyone can explain why? By blog has is scenario. check the homepage(PR1) and about(PR3) for example.
I am sure this piece of writing has touched all the internet users,
its really really fastidious paragraph on building up new web site.
Thanks for reading
Very interesting read, looks like I have some work to do.. I have been going through the roof with building back-links recently.. Its winter time and work is slow! I didn’t realize that it could hurt my site
I’m gone to inform my little brother, that he should also visit this weblog on regular basis to get updated from most recent news update.
Awesome!
i never did seo for one of my site’s keyword but still the traffic was good because of social sharings and title, meta. as soon as i started doing rich and bulk anchor text for the same keyword, my position for the keyword went pages down. im still stuck on google 5 6th page from the first page.
Rauf, I would suggest you continue what you are doing but test different strategies.